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Israeli passenger Yaniv Hayun said he drew on what he had seen in Mayday when he entered the cockpit during a reported emergency aboard a Flydubai flight. His account is one part of a developing story: news reports also credit two traveling Flydubai crew members with helping stabilize the aircraft, and the reviewed coverage does not establish final official findings about how the flight was recovered.

What Yaniv Hayun says happened

At Ben Gurion Airport on September 30, 2026, Hayun recounted the incident to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to The Times of Israel. Hayun said he entered the cockpit, saw the suspected attacker at the controls and pulled him out. He said he called on other Israelis to restrain the man, then returned to the cockpit as the aircraft tilted.

Hayun said he grabbed the controls and pulled them backward, joking, “I watch Mayday.” He said the aircraft began to level out before a pilot took over. These are Hayun’s statements about his actions and what he observed, not a technical reconstruction of the aircraft’s flight or a finding about which action restored control.

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Other crew members are part of the account

The Associated Press reported that two Flydubai crew members who were traveling on the aircraft rushed into the cockpit and helped stabilize it. The airline described them as on-duty crew members traveling on the plane. They had not been publicly identified in the AP report.

According to a passenger account cited by AP, one of the crew members reached the controls before the second joined him, and the cockpit door was then closed. This reporting places Hayun’s account alongside the work of crew members trained for aviation duties; it does not support portraying him as the sole person who regained control.

What is Mayday?

Mayday, known internationally as Air Crash Investigation, is a Canadian documentary series about aviation accidents and their causes. Ynet describes the show as combining dramatic reconstructions, interviews and computer-generated animation with accounts of investigations. Ynet reported that it was available in Israel on Disney+ and National Geographic; streaming availability can change by region and date.

In an interview with CBS News, executive producer Alex Bystram said actual commercial pilots advise actors on cockpit-control handling. He described the program’s focus as aviation-safety lessons and called it a “fantastic byproduct” if a viewer happened to pick up a tip that had the right effect. CBS News reported that the series had produced over 200 episodes at the time of its October 1, 2026 article.

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What reporting establishes—and what it does not

Al Jazeera reported that the aircraft descended more than 17,000 feet in two minutes and eventually made an emergency landing at Tabuk, Saudi Arabia. That is a reported flight-tracking figure, not a final investigative measurement established in the coverage summarized here.

The passenger account and subsequent news reports describe parts of a fast-moving emergency, but they do not amount to a settled official account of the aircraft’s recovery. The reviewed reporting also does not establish a final motive for the co-pilot. Details about the suspected attacker and the sequence of events should therefore remain attributed to the outlets and people reporting them, rather than stated as definitive investigative conclusions.

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A documentary is not cockpit training

Hayun said the series informed his thinking in a crisis. That does not prove that watching Mayday caused the flight’s recovery, and the incident is not guidance for passengers to enter a cockpit or operate aircraft controls. Commercial aircraft are complex systems, and an emergency response depends on the circumstances and trained crew. The account is best understood as one passenger’s reported actions within a wider response that included traveling Flydubai crew members.

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